Essay Carry on hospital By John Gathright	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
病院は大騒ぎ ひざを痛めて救急病棟に行った筆者は、病院がレバ刺し同じくらい苦手。 日本の医療は確かに優れているが、特に外国人にとっては、 コミュニケーションの面でなんとも居心地の悪いときがある。

Sirens blaring, people coughing, children screaming, cold sweat streaming down my forehead. I've done it again. I'm in the emergency ward of a Japanese hospital.

Hanging out in hospital emergency rooms does not rate high on my list of fun things to do in Japan. It's down there with eating raw liver and that really is scraping bottom for me

But here I am waiting to have my knee examined. I'd come in with a damaged knee and I'm sure I'll be leaving with something completely different — the horribly contagious infection that the woman sitting next to me has. How do I know that it's horrible? A nurse has just announced it over the PA system and told her to put on a mask.

The woman slumps over — not from the effects of the infection — but from embarrassment. The nurse on the PA system does not spare her. "Please remember to wash your hands and gargle as well." Everyone starts moving away from her.

Don't get me wrong. The Japanese health system is very good. There are world-class hospitals with world-class surgeons and specialists in almost every field of medicine. On the other hand, there are also doctors and nurses who lack basic bedside manners and communication skills, even in Japanese.

For example, a good friend of mine was sitting in the waiting room before seeing a doctor about a cold, when, in clear earshot of everyone else there, she was asked by the nurses if she had more than one boyfriend and recommended that she have her blood checked for AIDS while she was there. She was floored.

Another friend, a Canadian, was told that she was "lumpy" by a no-doubt well-intentioned nurse. An African friend was told by a nurse during his annual check up that if he ate traditional Japanese food his complexion would become lighter and he would be more attractive to Japanese women

My son was told by a doctor that he was just exaggerating the pain in his arm. "Foreigners do not endure pain as well as the Japanese. It will be a good thing to learn while he is in Japan." After two weeks of pain, we went for a second opinion and found out that the arm was broken

The best one for me was a close friend of mine who is a very big-boned lady of Mexican descent. She went into a hospital and the nurse asked her very seriously, "You are big and muscular and have a little shadow over your mouth. Can you tell me if you are a lady or not?" The woman laughed and said, "Should I dance naked for you?" The nurse said, "But men can do that too!"

The examples that I have shared here are hardly life-threatening. But I do know of some very dangerous mishaps that have arisen from miscommunication during emergencies. I do not criticize or condemn Japanese doctors and nurses for not being multilingual. It isn't fair to expect them to be. I also know from personal experience that there are many wonderful doctors and nurses who will bend over backward to help the foreign community and communicate effectively

Meanwhile, the expatriate community in Japan should become proactive and start an unofficial informal guide book and rating system for hospitals in their local communities and put it online. And if someone want to start a joke book, I'm all for that too!

Shukan ST: Oct. 20, 2006

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